How to Start a Landscape Design Business
Landscape design involves the activity of designing residential and commercial landscaping projects. It is possible to offer other services such as installation; either with your crew or by sub-contracting the installation.
Landscaping, on the other hand, is the activity of changing a particular piece of land to make it more attractive by growing trees and shrubs with a view to beautifying the piece of land. A beautified piece of land is commonly known as gardening. The landscape industry is highly regulated because of the hazardous compounds that are being handled by workers. For this reason, practitioners are expected to undergo a course of study and earn a certification that allows them to use hazardous chemicals.
Landscape designers primarily focus on the design and layout of a lawn in such a way as to show where to position various things such as ponds, flower-beds, and stone walkways. Sometimes, landscape designers through their professional work significantly increase the property value.
How to start a landscape design business
- Earn relevant qualification for your proposed business:
- Draw up a business plan
- Make your business legal
- Identify your target customers and begin informal contacts
- Obtain permits, insurance and bonds
- List of working tools to purchase
- Have a service agreement template
- Craft a website
- Collaborating with local businesses
- Hire crew members
- Marketing your business
- How to brand your product/service and keep customers coming back
- Conclusion
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Many people are endowed with many ideas coupled with a vision to begin their own business; some are natural business people and they do it successfully, others dabble into it because of discontent in their present work environment. For whatever reason, if you desire to go into the landscape design business and you are passionate about it, can be the right thing to do. And if you do it diligently, you will be one of those who are successful. We have put together in this article, a complete guide to starting a landscape design business. Please read on.
Earn relevant qualification for your proposed business
To be ready for the landscape design business, you must be sound academically and/or training with a landscape professional so that you will know from the outset what your job and future business will be like. It is necessary to have a solid background before you launch your landscape design business. Such a foundation should include earning a certificate in landscape design and acquiring on the job experience. Earning a college diploma or university degree in landscaping design and combining it with one or two years of practical experience with a landscape professional will stand you in good stead when you launch your own business. A combination of both academic and training with a landscape designer will lend credence to your business.
Draw up a business plan
Every business, big or small needs a plan like a road map to show the direction where they’re going and how they will get there.
Therefore create a plan that deals with every aspect of your new company. Here are a few examples of what most landscape design business will cover:
What are your business goals for the next year?
How are you going to market your services?
Who are your potential customers
How will you track all of your leads and sales?
The product or service – What are the service range and the methods for designing a landscape.
The market segment, size of product/service – What consists of the market and what are the segments of the market you want to serve.
The management team – Do you propose to engage employees and who among them are going to be part of the management staff or who is going to be a major shareholder.
The production process and plan – What is the process you have to go through before the landscape design is produced. Which design software are you going to procure and other associated technology, processes before you come up with the final product/service
The marketing plan – Here you are going to set strategies that will achieve the set goals and the tactics you are going to adopt:
How to produce the landscape design that will give you an edge over your rivals
How to set a competitive price whenever you bid for a contract.
How to devise a promotional strategy that will address your promotional needs such as what to advertise, where to advertise, when to advertise and the volume of space and airtime that will be sufficient coverage for your landscape design business.
How to reach your intended audience in terms of marketing communication and where they can be found.
Manpower requirements – You will need to know the human resources requirements and the associated costs. Who is going to be co-opted into executive management because of their expertise, volume of their network or having a good relationship with those you are likely to seek for their patronage.
Estimated capital expenditure – What is the estimated capital expenditure that will procure working tools for your landscape design business. The correct estimate of this cost will enable you to know how much capital you will need minus your day-to-day working capital. To arrive at this figure, you need first-hand information from those in the same business or engage a consultant who will provide you with an accurate estimate.
Estimated working capital. – You must also estimate your working day-to-day capital to save you the problem of being unable to pay workers salaries and other everyday expenses.
Cash budget – The cash budget highlights your cash requirements over a period of time, whether you will need an overdraft or surplus cash.
Profitability analysis and evaluation of the project. – You will be able to project the cash inflow and outflow and be able to evaluate the entire projects for the year or period under review. This will help whether to engage in this landscape business or not as well as evaluate each project.
Data and information for small business enterprises such as landscape design can be collected through the usual method of survey, observation and online.
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Make your landscape design business legal
As soon as you have procured all relevant qualifications and experience, go for all the required legal documents to make your business legit, protect yourself, and build trust within your community.
Conduct research with your local authority to make sure you possess all of the required permits, licenses and insurances. You can visit your local town hall for your business registration and enquire what else is needed to be legally done before you launch your business.
Don’t forget to create a solid contract to protect you from legal disputes when you start bringing in clients. A solid contract will always protect you from personal liability should your business be sued and make sure you agree on the same terms with your client in every project.
In every contract you create, make sure you include some basics in it such as the names of people in the contract, design services being offered, cost, deadlines for submission of finished jobs and how disputes should be resolved. Always use an Attorney to vet your contract template before using it to make sure all relevant details are included.
Identify your target customers and begin informal contacts
Your customers comprise of mainly affluent homeowners who know the value of keeping the lawn beautiful by having a well-designed landscape compound. We have such class A and B in social class ranking and they are found within your neighbourhood and elsewhere. Use available means to trace and reach them. Specifically, they include the following:
Homeowners who have no skill in the design of landscaping but have the desire to have a beautifully designed landscape.
Homeowners who plan to modernize their existing landscaping.
Homeowners who plan to put up their home for sale but wish to upgrade it before it happens.
Those who are still building both residential and commercial properties who are yet to have their own landscape designed.
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Obtain permits, insurance and bonds
Find out about how to obtain all the necessary permits, bonds and insurance before launching your business and begin your first client. You will be heavily fined if you fail to comply with the State and local authority regulations.
It may interest to know that your landscape designs are intellectual property, which means that they belong to you until they are handed out to the client under contract…For this reason, you should always use landscaping design contracts when contracting the work. Moreover, you should not release your designs to the client until all payments terms have been complied with. If you decide not to heed this warning, you will risk losing your design work to the client who is at liberty to use it without settling the bills. It will be hard to rescind the contract and restore it to the original state.
List of working tools to purchase
The Daily Tools Of A Landscape Architect/Designer
You will need as a Landscape Designer and Architect many different tools and many techniques to accomplish a task. Out of these tools, some of them are of advanced technology while some others are quite common tools. However, the list we have here isn’t exhaustive but most of them are featured. Every project sometimes needs different tools, sometimes of advanced technological innovations while others need a basic technique to finish the task. The following are the list of tools, objects, and programs in use nowadays to do a job and accomplish tasks.
Sketchbook and Pen
Every Landscape Designer always uses a sketchbook and accompanying pen to sketching a concept or diagram and jot down meeting notes. The Landscape Designer takes these tools everywhere, from seeing a prospective client to working in their office.
Trace Paper
This tool is like the sketchbook that is always used in the initial stages in design to capture ideas that can be developed later. Trace paper is used in the analysis phase to design a project which comes in different sizes.
Scale
The Scale is of two types that are used to measure and draw scaled documents. Without Scale, it is difficult to draw and measure scaled documents correctly. The Landscape Designers most of the time use pre- scaled in what is known as Engineer’s Scale to draw an image. Scales typically has a total of six different drawing scales – 3 sided of 2 different scales on each side.
Markers and Pencils
Landscape Designers use markers and pencils at different stages of design to put forward an idea or present. visual interest to a design. Markers can be used, for example to make a presentation explicit for a project.
Digital Camera and Tape Measure
We use these simple to take pictures and video of a site particularly when visiting a site for the first time with a client or work in progress at a site. A Tape Measure is very vital as it used to verify dimensions and measure space.
Printed Construction Drawings
Printed Construction Drawings is used as a substitute for our work on screens. The simple reasons for using printed drawings is that sometimes it helps spot minor graphic issues which is easier to spot than discovering such errors on a digital pdf file.
Computer-Aided Design (CAD) Software
CAD software is used for drafting construction documents and it makes such construction documents easy to organize. The great advantage of using CAD programs is that such programs created by CAD software can be used in other programs such as SketchUP
Have a service agreement template
Landscape designer businesses do require signing an agreement with clients before accepting a new project. The agreement serves to clear up mistakes and clarify client expectations and reduce the risks of future misunderstanding between you and your client. Service agreement provides among other things terms and conditions of payment, intellectual property ownership as well as service level expectations.
You need to read the service agreement thoroughly before signing it. All the service agreement require the consultation of an attorney who will draft the agreement to cover the mutual understanding of both parties (consensus ad idem).
Craft a website
Creating a website in landscape business is a necessity. You should put up a site no matter how small your business is since it represents your office, especially if you are using your apartment as your office. Having a site will lend credence to your business and help you appear in local searches so far you succinctly apply the search engine optimisation (SEO).
In creating your website, outsource its creation unless you have the basic idea of how to set it up. Professionally designed website will be attractive because it will contain the basic ingredients that will engage prospective visitors such as relevant contents, why your service is exceptional and the incentives that are available to first-time users of your landscape design services.
Collaborating with local businesses
Sign up with a local plant sales outlet and get in touch with local contractors to help you in your landscaping business. Collaborating with local businesses can expose your business to the community and more people will get to know your business. By relating more with the local businesses, it is possible to result in mutual referrals and that will support your local economy.
Hire Crew Members
You may not hire a crew on launch because of lack of sufficient funding but if suddenly it becomes necessary because of an unexpected surge in clients, you should go ahead and hire. But typically it is wiser to start on your own, and as the business grows with revenue rising, it makes business sense to hire at this stage. Before you go ahead and hire, take into consideration the following:
Be cautious when engaging family members and friends because it is cheaper to do so, don’t forget it can also result in tense situations should there be a misunderstanding. If however, you decide to tow that part, you should try to leave sentiment out of it and apply professionalism all the time.
When hiring, look for pleasant and outgoing people. Acquiring clients and customer service are the vital aspects of managing a business and hiring someone who isn’t well disposed to people could potentially ruin the chances of achieving success. Make sure to hire friendly and well-spoken individuals who will be prepared to work for you.
Concentrate on your current network by contacting potential vendors and clients, including other peers in your community. Keep in mind when hiring, the job description and man profile.
Moreover, bear in mind that you don’t need to hire people immediately until the need for it becomes apparent. It is better to get to understand the business first, but in the event that the need arises because of sudden rapid growth, do go ahead and hire.
Marketing your business
You need a marketing strategy that shows in broad terms your plans to attack the market and get at your target audience before you can break into the market. You need to find out how to penetrate the market and grow geographically since you need to capture a good part of the market as quickly as possible.
Plan the methods to adopt to reach prospective customers with such things as flyers, through social media, print and electronic media, but more importantly, the use of referrals. The use of incentives to woo prospective customers can’t be overemphasized. Go through your network to find homeowners who might need your services and contact them through direct mail or other possible ways. Offer them handsome discounts in order to have an opportunity to begin to serve customers. When you offer them your design services, do extra work in order to delight them and always keep high standards. This is one of the ways to get your name out to the community.
Have a sales plan prepared to help you reach as many prospects as possible when you launch your business. You may try the customer relationship management (CRM) software to assist in organizing all of your prospects in one place.
It is still necessary to attend networking events and hand out flyers and business cards. If you happen to have worked with a design firm, you can adapt their strategies if those strategies have worked in your previous workplace. You can buy a list of names of companies that have in the past used design services and offer better value for the same price.
Sign up to professional associations of the landscape design as well as subscribing to landscape design magazines and sites to keep up to date on industry news and technological improvements. Begin to plan to deliver papers at conferences and other seminars.
Show a physical or online landscape design portfolio to display your work to prospects, using images of your finished work.
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How to brand your product/service and keep customers coming back
To set your landscape design business apart from others, you should brand your business and differentiate it from the rest of the landscape businesses in your area. Choose a name that is unique, relates and represent your business; a name that is easily pronounced, recognizable and memorable. Coin it from your unique selling proposition (USP) and use the name in all promotional activities and all company documents. When you now apply your expert knowledge in landscape design to craft something exceptional for clients, the name will ring a bell in the landscaping industry; it is only a matter of time.
Secondly, segment your market and select which segment to serve based on such criteria as homogeneity, measurability, substantiality and accessibility. Since every market is unique, mobilize your resources to serve and meet the needs of the segment you select. For instance, residents of Government Reserve Areas (GRA) usually have a certain view they are going after when designing outside spaces. Similarly, large corporations look for a specially designed landscape that is pleasant to behold.
If you choose to specialize with a single market segment, you are likely to excel since you will understand the unique needs of the market better than a company that wants to be a jack of all trades. But don’t forget that you do not put all your eggs in one basket.
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Conclusion:
These are just a few of the things needed in the landscape design business which you need to consider. The same way like any other business goals, growth will come at the appropriate time; you only need to be hardworking and focussed. It must also be said that building up a small business can be stressful, but if you persevere and efficiently make use of the available resources, success and spare time will come naturally.